RAID 5 Recovery

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Manual RAID 5 Recovery

Manual RAID 5 recovery is very similar to a manual RAID 0 recovery.
For a RAID 0, it is needed to choose a large file which is known to be stored on the array.
Then, find parts of the file on the array member disks.
Once you have located file parts you can determine array parameters such as block size and disk order.

For RAID 5 you also need to locate parity blocks.
For odd number of disks parity is always similar to random data.
When you note that the data change into gibberish, it is likely a start of a parity block.
For even number of disks parity can store a copy of data if all the remaining disks contain zeroes or a very similar data.
When analyzing RAID5 with even number of disks you should avoid such areas.
If the sample file you search for happens to be in the area with almost all zero data, consider using another sample file.